Working ten hour days allows you to fall behind twice as fast as you could working five hour days.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

At two-tenths the speed of light, dust and atoms might not do significant damage even in a voyage of 40 years, but the faster you go, the worse it is--space begins to become abrasive. When you begin to approach the speed of light, hydrogen atoms become cosmic-ray particles, and they will fry the crew. ...So 60,000 kilometers per second may be the practical speed limit for space travel.

The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers.

When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.

Things do change. The only question is that since things are deteriorating so quickly, will society and man's habits change quickly enough?

I do not use airplanes. They strike me as unsporting. You can have an automobile accident-and survive. You can be on a sinking ship-and survive. You can be in an earthquake, fire, volcanic eruption, tornado, what you will-and survive. But if your plane crashes, you do not survive. And I say the heck with it.